You'd think it's just about knitting and travel, but it's really about life, love, faith...and food

Friday, November 6, 2009

Knit Along: Shawl Collar Vest from Lamb Shoppe - Day 3

Infatuation...

The 1knit-1purl ribbing, which would have been confounding with all its backward and forward movement of yarn, is zipping along nicely with my newfound continental skills. The difference in speed is really apparent in a project with constant switching back and forth from knitting to purling. I’m not sure it would make such a radical difference in stockinette, and I must admit to a fair amount of trepidation as to whether or not I’d attempt this on a lace pattern--I can knit continental, I can purl, but I’ll need more courage to try a yarn-over or an ssk or anything tricky like that. No, ribbing is the perfect step up for me at the moment. But who knows, armed with my new speed I might get cocky. It’s been known to happen.

Again, I’m surprised by the color’s attraction for me. I really don’t think of myself as a pastel pink kind of gal, and I’m still mystified as to why I chose it over the red that would have made so much more sense. And that’s part of the wonder of yarn for me...sometimes it chooses you. We go into a store, perfectly prepared to get something practical and even downright basic, and a random wild infatuation takes over. Perfectly sensible people drop oodles of money on cashmere-mohair blends and yarn plucked from ox underbellies. We buy more yarn even though we already have more yarn that we could knit in our lifetimes. The siren song of touch and color, of the possibility of whatever it is we could make from that ball of teal laceweight. I don’t know how I ended up with a bag of ballet-pink yarn, but I know that I’m unreasonably delighted that I did. I love touching it, knitting it, holding it.